Under suitable conditions we can grow mushrooms easily in open fields. The planting of the spawn is all the trouble they cause. During the late summer and fall months mushrooms often appear spontaneously and in great quantity in our pastures. In their natural condition, they are an uncertain crop. One year they may occur in the greatest abundance, and in the next none can be found. Why this is so is not clear. The popular opinion is that after a dry summer mushrooms abound in the fields, but after a wet summer they are a very scarce crop; and the inference is that the moisture has killed the spawn in the ground. This may be true, but how does it happen that good spawn planted by hand in the fields in early summer will produce mushrooms toward fall whether the summer has been wet or dry?
As a rule, wild mushrooms abound most in rich, old, well drained, rolling pasture lands, and avoid dry, sandy, or wet places, or the neighborhood of trees and bushes. In attempting to cultivate them in open fields we should provide similar conditions. Then the chief requisite is good spawn, for without this we cannot raise mushrooms.
Mr. Henshaw, of Staten Island, who has been very successful in growing mushrooms in the fields as well as indoors, writes to me as follows: You ask me to give you my plan of growing mushrooms in the fields during the summer. It is very simple. About the end of June, or as soon as dry weather sets in, we remove the old beds from our mushroom house, and if there should be any live spawn in the bottom of our beds we put it in a wheelbarrow and take it to the field, where we plant it in the open places, but never under trees. In planting, we lift a sod and put a shovelful of the manure containing the spawn in the hole, then replace the sod and beat it down firm; this we do at distances of twelve feet apart. If we have no live spawn from our indoor beds we take the common brick spawn, and put about a quarter of a brick into each hole, returning and beating down the sod as already stated.
This is all that is done. If there comes a dry time after the spawn is put in the pasture we are sure to have a good supply of mushrooms in the fall.
A few years ago Carter & Co., seedsmen, London, sent this to one of the gardening periodicals: “The following mode of growing mushrooms in meadows by one of our customers may be interesting to your readers: In March (May would be soon enough here) he begins to collect droppings from the stables.
These, when enough have been gathered together, are taken into the meadow, where holes dug here and there about one foot or eighteen inches square are filled with them, the soil removed being scattered over the surrounding grass. When all the holes have been filled and made solid he then places two or three pieces of spawn about one inch square in each hole, treads all down firmly, replaces the turf and beats it tightly down. Under this system, in
August and September mushrooms appear without fail in abundance and without any further care. The method is simple and the result certain. Therefore all who happen to have a meadow, paddock, or grass field, and are fond of mushrooms, should try the experiment. ... In the case in question fresh holes were spawned every year.
Author Resource:
Jackson Forrest is a mushroom growing enthusiast and runs the popular http://www.MushroomGrowingSecrets.com website where he offers the best-selling ebook "How to Grow Mushrooms for Fun and Profit". Get your copy today!
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